Cuestión de maquilasdiferencia entre molino y fábrica de harinas

Resum

In Spanish there are two different terms to describe the establishments where the cereal is ground: the mills and the flour factories. Why this difference? Mistakenly, it´s common to identify its distinction in terms of technological aspects, associating mill to the instrument that uses stones to grind, while flour factories are related to large industrial buildings where rollers or cylinder mills are used. In this article we will detail that the technical evolution has nothing to do with the distinction of words, being economic reasons the ones that separate both production systems. With Capitalism, a new way of trading a basic product such as wheat -bread cereals in general- arises, giving rise to the flour bourgeoisie, the factory system and the total exchange in currency. Although this industrial practice became more and more prevalent and achieved increasing power, it did not put an end to the traditional system that came to be known as ‘molino maquilero’ (‘maquilero mill’), that is, the trade and tool in which cereal is transformed into flour in exchange for a percent payment in kind, the so-called ‘maquila’ (Spanish word to refer to the payment in kind which was delivered in exchange for grinding the grain).